The Ark restaurant in Riverside complete with its storied – and perhaps even checkered past – begins a new chapter this summer. After nearly a century, folks can now enjoy those fabled catfish and hushpuppies – arguably the best ever served, anywhere – at a second location, on Main Street in Springville.
“That’s right,” smiled Kyle Ostermeyer. He, along with his wife, Amanda, are co-owners of the iconic restaurant. “After 94 years, we decided to expand it and have a second location. Springville has welcomed us with open arms.”
Preparing some of the Ark’s famous dishes
As Amanda recalls, her husband learned about the restaurant and its fabled history when he worked as a food service distributor and sold to two of the original Ark’s three previous owners.
“When Shirley (Shirley Abts) decided to retire in 2022, we purchased The Ark from her, becoming the fourth owner in 94 years,” said Amanda. “We kept the recipes and most of the staff, making just a few cosmetic upgrades to the original location. We always thought we might open another location in the distant future, but when the opportunity to purchase a historic restaurant building in downtown Springville presented itself, we couldn’t pass it up.”
The Ark, Springville, is located in what used to be The Springville Café. Touting the slogan, “Where Springville Meets to Eat,” the eatery proved to be a favorite with the townsfolk for 24 years, until COVID claimed it as yet another victim.
Nobody is happier to see the old restaurant up and running than Springville Mayor Dave Thomas. And he’s especially happy it’s opening as The Ark.
“Anybody who knows catfish knows about the Ark,” he said. “Their reputation precedes them.”
And what a reputation that is. As Kyle proudly points out, awards and accolades just keep on coming for the iconic restaurant. The Ark’s catfish platter is listed on the Alabama Bureau of Tourism and Travel’s “100 Dishes to Eat Before You Die” list. The Ark was also a finalist in a competition sponsored by the Alabama Catfish Producers Association called Bama’s Best Catfish Restaurant and was featured in USA Today’s list of the “Top Ten Catfish Restaurants In The Nation.”
“Opening up here in Springville is significant for everyone involved,” said Thomas. “Significant for the Ark because, I believe, they picked the right market and the right location to be wildly successful. I am thrilled to have such a notable establishment with a following that brings people from far and wide. And a restaurant that has such a rich history.”
That history is the stuff of which legends are made. It reads like pages straight out of a Southern novel with a plot both outrageous and irreverent.
As the story goes, seems the Ark’s first owner, “Red” Thompson didn’t let prohibition or lawmen from two countries deter him from selling alcohol to his patrons. With a rather ingenious, albeit illegal scheme Red bought a dredge barge, moored it just off the Coosa riverbank and operated a floating bar or if you prefer speakeasy.
The original Ark floating on the Coosa
Looking back, Red had a sweet deal going – all the booze thirsty patrons could drink and all the catfish he could catch and cook, right from end of the barge. The wily business owner continued to hoodwink authorities for several years, until the barge was destroyed by fire.
The Ostermeyers aren’t expecting any of that kind of drama in its Springville location, but they are expecting to continue serving up those long famous crispy catfish and hushpuppies.
There is nothing different here in Springville,” said Kyle. “We are duplicating it exactly. People who come here will get the same look, taste and feel that they do at Riverside.”
That’s good news for the Micah Shelton family who represent three generations of Ark aficionados.
“I can’t get enough of the catfish, and my three-year daughter can’t get enough of the catfish nuggets,” he said. “It’s a place we can consistently get good food and good service. We are a family of four but the generation before me, my parents and my children’s grandparents used to eat at the Riverside location for years.”
Shelton says he is now following that family tradition and carrying his own family to the familiar restaurant. He says his wife Hannah’s favorite Ark offering is the deviled crab “and at the rate we’re going,” he laughed, “it wouldn’t surprise me if our three-month-old cuts his teeth on the hushpuppies.”
We’re really glad to have something that’s familiar to us and more accessible to my family. We’re much closer now that they have a Springville location.”
Mayor Thomas dittos the sentiment. “Folks don’t have to go all the way to Riverside now,” he said. “They can come here and enjoy the same food, the same people. The Ark is part of the Springville fabric and family now.”
Allied Mineral Products breaks ground on $23.5M expansion in Pell City
Allied Mineral Products President and CEO Paul Jamieson didn’t expect to be standing where he was on June 11, addressing a crowd of over 100 people to break ground on a $23.5 million expansion. At least not this soon.
It is the company’s second expansion in five years at the Pell City plant, adding a 200,000 square foot production facility, which will generate 13 new jobs and boost the employment roster to 100.
“Our partnership with Alabama is strengthened yet again with the expansion of this plant which we built in 2019,” said Jamieson. “Our theme for this event is ‘Growth Propels Us.’ This is true for Allied globally, but nowhere more apparent than here in Pell City,” he told the crowd.
“Locating our facility in Alabama was part of a long-term strategy to expand our manufacturing presence in the South to be closer to our customers. Because of the quality of this workforce and the local support here, our growth in Alabama has been faster than we planned,” Jamieson added. “We are excited to be expanding our facility so soon and are confident this will help us to continue that growth.”
County Commission Chairman Stan Batemon
“Since its founding over 60 years ago, Allied Mineral Products has grown into a global company, serving multiple industries and registering sales to more than 100 countries,” said Alabama Commerce Secretary Ellen McNair. “With a worldwide presence, the company could have selected another location for this investment, so this expansion in Pell City is truly a testament to the workforce there.”
Jamieson, too, talked of the quality of Allied’s employees, which ensured growth in Alabama quicker than planned. “The global standard is being set right here in Alabama,” he said.
The employee-owned stock company produces a variety of heat containment refractory products used in industrial applications. Construction on the new facility, now under way, will be competed in late 2025. In addition to the new building, the expansion will include installation of new manufacturing equipment including cranes, drying ovens and mixers.
Allied will increase the Pell City facility’s production capacity, improve efficiency, prepare it for growth and increase its ability to serve the company’s Southern region.
Joining Commerce to support the project were the Pell City Industrial Development Board and the Alabama workforce development agency AIDT, which will provide services including skills training on automation technologies for company workers.
“We are happy that Allied Mineral chose its Pell City facility for this new investment. It is always good to see our growth in our industrial base and is a reflection of the quality of the workforce in St. Clair County,” said Stan Batemon, chairman of the St. Clair County Commission. “it validates that we’re doing something right in providing a quality workforce.”
Pell City Mayor Bill Pruitt also cheered the company’s growth plans. “The City of Pell City is proud to see the continued growth and success at Allied Mineral Products,” Pruitt said. “New investment and job growth will stimulate the local economy and highlight the fact that Pell City is a great place for business.”
Besides Pell City, Allied has U.S. locations in Brownsville, Texa,s and Columbus, Ohio, where it is headquartered. The company also has facilities in Canada, South America, Europe, India, China, South Africa and Russia.
Latest national chain to open location in St. Clair
Another national brand is heading to Pell City. Construction is already underway on Planet Fitness on Vaughan Lane, further populating the commercial stretch that runs by the expansive Walmart Supercenter shopping area known as Bankhead Crossings.
That district already includes Home Depot, Holiday Inn Express, Buffalo Wild Wings, Premier Cinema and Entertainment Center, Hampton Inn, Comfort Suites, City Market, Freddie’s Steakburgers, Zaxby’s, Krystal and Wendy’s. Under construction next to Home Depot is TownPlace Suites by Marriott.
City and company officials project an opening date in December for Planet Fitness. “It’s such a big name,” said City Manager Brian Muenger. “It will pair very well with business travelers. It’s a very welcome amenity to our community as a whole, but it will be attractive to business travelers, too.”
The two-story complex calls for massage and training areas, tanning beds and more. With more than 2,500 locations, Planet Fitness says its goal is “to provide a clean, safe, welcoming environment for anyone who walks through our door, and all the equipment, amenities and support you need once you’re here.”
Membership allows you access to other locations in addition to your home club.
“It’s exciting to see another building coming out of the ground and filling Bankhead Crossings,” said Muenger, referring to the commercial district.
And it is another sign of more growth for the future of Pell City overall.
A new subdivision is being developed nearby on Florida Road, where 200 homes are expected to be built. Sewer, curb and gutter work is “moving right along” on what is to be called Oak Village, Muenger said. Planet Fitness and other developments should be quality of life amenities attractive to residential growth.
Just across the interstate, Pell City Square is performing well. In the first eight months since opening, “it is substantially ahead of projected numbers. It is performing above expectations.”
Pell City Square is home to Hobby Lobby, TJ JMaxx, Ross Dress for Less, Ulta, PetSmart, Old Navy and Five Below. Under construction nearby are Whataburger and Outback Steakhouse.
What else can Pell City expect? Muenger hints that more growth is up ahead. “A lot of sites are getting interest.”
Childhood sure has changed a lot over the last 40 years. In fact, it’s been almost completely rewritten over the years.
If a great childhood, by today’s standards, is now defined by expensive toys, designer clothes, lavish vacations or a million pre-planned, carefully curated, activities … my kids won’t have one.
But I will give them a childhood filled with simplicity, freedom and boredom.
I’ll give them the gift of simplicity … the opportunity to slow down, unplug and enjoy life. We threw away nearly all mainstream toys years ago and realized less really is more. Kids really don’t need the constant bombardment of “things” to be content. Too much ‘stuff’ creates imagination stagnation. It stifles their creativity.
I’ll give them freedom … to roam, to play and get dirty. I will give them the freedom to climb trees, play in the creek, catch fish and poke ant hills with a stick. Freedom to get bug bites, bloody knees, splinters, holes in their clothes and to learn lots of lessons the hard way. I’ll give them the freedom to be kids.
And I’ll give them boredom … perhaps the best gift I can give them. Because a great imagination is born from boredom. And a great imagination gives way to ideas and innovation as they grow up. So, I encourage boredom often because their best ideas will be found there. I let them wonder, wander, try and entertain their own ideas.
The best gift we can give our children is their childhood.
Wife, mother, photographer & current resident of the unassumingly magical town of Steele, Alabama
Complete Health’s Joy St. John has had a lifetime desire to take care of people
Story by Paul South Photos by Mackenzie Free
As a teen, before Joy St. John and her family moved from the Dallas County community of Tyler to Pell City, the health care bug bit her.
She was a candy striper, one of a small cadre of young women clad in red and white striped uniforms, who dispensed bedside smiles and kindness to the sick and their families.
“That’s what started everything and drew my interest to nursing,” she said. “Seeing (nurses) help people, I thought that was something that I would want to do.”
Joy’s medical assistants Heather Barnett and Angela Wolf are a key part of taking care of people at Complete Healthcare
Fast forward. St. John earned a degree in nursing at UAB and a graduate degree from the Ida B. Moffett School of Nursing at Samford to become a nurse practitioner and worked as a nurse at Children’s Hospital of Alabama in Birmingham.
Now, she’s back home in Pell City, serving as a nurse practitioner at Complete Health.
A nurse practitioner is a registered nurse who is qualified through advanced training to assume some of the duties and responsibilities once reserved only for physicians.
In Alabama, nurse practitioners are required by law to work under the supervision of a physician.
According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, nurse practitioners are one of the fastest growing professions in the United States. It was projected that the number of N.P.s in the country would grow some 45 percent between 2022 and 2032.
Increasing demands on doctors have triggered the growing demand for nurse practitioners, St. John said.
“(Doctors) just don’t have the time to see the amount of people that they have at their practice. (Nurse practitioners) are a great way to get patients in and seen, and we can actually be their primary care doctor if that’s what they wish.”
Complete Health Pell City is part of the Complete Health family of clinics in Alabama, Florida and Virginia. But while the Pell City facility is part of a larger corporate umbrella, it still cares for patients in a hometown way.
St. John works primarily in family medicine. “I’m a primary care physician for a good number of people. I diagnose problems, take care of chronic problems,” she said. “Sometimes people come in with undiagnosed medical problems. And then, we can start being their primary care provider and start doing preventative care.”
Complete Health Pell City also seeks to educate patients and their families about their condition.
As Pell City and St. Clair County have grown, St. John has seen her practice change. Complete Health has become a “one stop shop” for health care. “It’s definitely gotten bigger, with the addition of more doctors and the addition of more nurse practitioners,” St. John said.
“I have been here for 14 years. It’s been a great service to the community because we have CT scan, ultrasound and MRI, our own pharmacy, and we have a lot of specialty doctors that come in so (patients) don’t have to drive to Birmingham or Anniston to get specialty care.”
What sets Complete Health Pell City apart? “We can take care of the whole person,” she said. “We even have an urgent care that’s open seven days a week. Even after hours, they would have access to their records as far as their chronic conditions. We generally get people in pretty quick within one to two days.”
The business of healthcare, specifically navigating the huge health insurance marketplace, is the profession’s biggest challenge, she said.
“You sometimes have to modify a person’s plan of care because of insurance,” St. John said. “Their insurance sometimes won’t cover a certain medication or a certain test they need. It’s sometimes very frustrating to try to diagnose problems and take care of the patient when insurance won’t cover it. So, you have to make other decisions and talk to patients about what’s best for them.”
She added, “There’s no use in me prescribing an expensive medicine when they’re not going to pick it up (because of cost), when we can talk about it and go to another option. The amount of insurance plans out there is challenging for us.”
The presence of Complete Health and other healthcare providers has impacted rural communities in a positive way, giving those once-underserved areas better access to health care.
“Companies are able to put nurse practitioners out in rural areas where they might not be able to place doctors,” St. John said. “That’s very important for them and all the surrounding towns and cities to have access to health care.”
In the South, perhaps the most trusted people in the community are pastors and doctors. St. John has lived in Pell City since the 11th grade. She believes that makes a difference in terms of the doctor-patient relationship. That difference sometimes is seen in tangible ways.
“They send me cards on my birthday, send us Christmas cards, or you know, they know the details about me and our staff’s lives. It makes a difference, and they pay attention. We care about them, too.”
There are other little things that make her clinic seem like an old-time country practice that stretches beyond paying a bill.
“They bring us fruit, cakes, things like that,” St. John said. “Just like the old days. It’s one of the joys of practicing medicine in a small town.”
And, as you might expect, she often encounters her patients at the grocery store or elsewhere out and about.
“They’ll speak to me, or give me a hug,” she said. “It means a lot.”
And sometimes, they want a diagnosis for a malady among the cucumbers and collards in the produce aisle. “Sometimes they do,” St. John said. “But that’s a whole other story.”
St. John has served as a nurse practitioner for 24 years, beginning with a decade at UAB. Before that, the mother of two grown sons and a grandmother of two boys worked for 10 years as a registered nurse and nursing assistant at Children’s.
Like the candy striper experience, something closer to home deepened her commitment to a health care career – her dad, Lee Rhoden, and his last, long battle.
“When I was 26, my father passed,” she said. “He had lung cancer. I was able to offer my services. Just having someone in the family that knows medical terminology after a diagnosis is a blessing. Caring for him was a blessing. It pushed me toward the nurse practitioner part because I just wanted to do more than punch a clock every day. I wanted to really make a difference.”
The youngest of four girls, St. John recalled one piece of advice her dad gave her, wisdom that sustains her on hardscrabble days.
“He always told us, ‘You get an education and be able to provide for your family. Don’t depend on anyone else.’ He always pushed us to set high goals. That was the beginning for me.”
For St. John across the years, a number of patient encounters affirm that she embarked on the right career journey. Those happen, she said, “all the time. I’ve diagnosed several new diseases or caught things that were missed before,” she said. “We have to take those moments and make them last until the next one. It’s the little things. People really do appreciate you.”
She added, “It’s tough not to bring things home with you. We’re human, too.”
Sometimes, she said, her profession gets unfairly labeled as not caring enough. But she and her colleagues at Complete Health Pell City are deeply committed to their patients, she said.
“This is a hard profession,” St. John said. “If you don’t love it, you aren’t going to make it. And you have to love people when they’re well and when they’re sick, when they’re mad, or they’re depressed. You have to show them empathy and sympathy. You won’t stay in this profession if you don’t love it.
“The Lord has a reason for placing us where we are,” she said. “We may be the one person who needs to tell them it’s going to be OK, and we’re here to talk about it.”
It’s been said that much about your childhood – your neighborhood, the house you grew up in, or the size of your backyard – often seems smaller when viewed through adult eyes.
For Malcolm Sokol, everything about Birmingham seems downright tiny. That’s because the retired architect and model railroad enthusiast has spent years recreating his version of the city’s Industrial District, all in miniature.
Trains are the centerpiece of Malcolm’s model city
He’s built his own small-scale 1952 versions of Ensley, Pratt City, North Birmingham, Elyton, Red Mountain and other areas, along with the railroads that connect them. There are restaurants, stores, warehouses, iron ore mines, steel mills, a rail yard, Sloss Furnaces and a railroad trestle. And he’s built it all within a room that measures 13 x 19 feet.
“A genuine model railroader tries to make everything as realistic as possible,” said Sokol, who now lives in Cropwell on Logan Martin Lake. There’s no doubt that Sokol, who estimates he’s spent more than 12,000 hours over the past eight years or so on his hobby, is the real deal. He’s got an assortment of regional and national awards for his designs to prove it.
“You can make a career out of a hobby, but when you love it so much it’s not like going to work,” he said. “You don’t put any value on your time with a hobby unless you plan to sell something, and I would never sell this.”
In addition to the time and money he’s spent creating his HO scale model railroad layout, Sokol has an emotional and sentimental investment, as well. It brings back memories of his childhood.
“I grew up in Fountain Heights, and when I was a kid, we used to walk down to the railroad tracks, which were about two blocks away,” he said. “We loved to watch the switching (of rails and cars) at all of the industries.”
Getting on track
Sokol, a member of the Wrecking Crew Model Railroad Club in Birmingham, got his first model railroad set when he was 8 or 9. “My father gave me and my younger brother, Howard, a Lionel O Guage railroad set,” he said. “We played with that thing until we wore it out.”
Some neighborhood friends had sets, as well, and they would put them together and play for hours. “That was my introduction to model railroading,” he said.
His interest was renewed not long after he and his wife, Marilyn, had their first child. They went to a model railroad show, where Sokol bought a set. “I said I was buying it for my son, but he was only a year and a half old at the time,” he said with a laugh.
Today, Sokol loves sharing his hobby with their three children and their spouses, along with their seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The Sokols’ home may be the only house on the lake where guests want to spend as much time inside as they do by the water.
“They love to run trains,” he said of his family and friends. “Everyone who comes here says, ‘Let me see what you’ve done on the trains’ They love to see the progress.”
There’s always something new to see in his train room, which used to be part of his garage. When Sokol got serious about his hobby, he finished the area, adding a ceiling and walls. He put the Masonite backdrop on three walls of the room, and he and his grandson, Garrett, used stencils to paint clouds and mountains. He later installed additional mountains he’d painted on panels of Masonite in the foreground, creating a multi-dimensional background.
The first two years were dedicated to building the frame and foundation for the layout and for laying the track. Using historical rail maps for Birmingham as a guide, Sokol added some of the industrial buildings that were built alongside the city’s tracks. His layout includes Loveman’s Warehouse, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Co. and the A&P Warehouse and Distribution Center.
First National Bank and Pete’s Famous Hot Dogs are represented in the layout, while some of the stores, such as Marilyn’s Knit Shop, were named for family members. Businesses in the Ensley section of the layout include Ideal Furniture, The Bank of Ensley and Gilmer Drugs. Sokol recently added Phase 2 of his railroad, which extends into an adjacent room measuring 13 x 6 feet.
Details matter
Sokol said the skills he honed during his architectural career, which spanned more than 30 years before he retired as CEO of Evan Terry Associates in 1998, has come in handy. “It definitely helps,” he said. “I have the design ability and the construction knowledge.”
Being his own client has allowed him the freedom to build everything just the way he wants. Although much of the layout was based on historical renderings, he took some artistic liberties, as well. “When you own a model railroad, you’re the owner and designer and you can make all the decisions,” he said. “When you’re playing all the roles, it’s easier.”
Special attention is paid to the lighting setup down to the street lamps
Sokol’s attention to detail is amazing. Although many model railroaders buy pre-made tracks, he bought the rails and used a band saw to cut 35,000 tiny wooden ties, which he attached with miniature metal spikes. “It’s all hand-laid, just like the real railroad does,” he said.
Most of his buildings are scratch built, meaning he designed, cut, assembled and painted them by hand, rather than using a kit. A watercolor artist, Sokol’s painting skills add an additional level of realism to his cities and buildings that takes time to create. He spent six months, for example, building and painting the railroad trestle, which is modeled after the L&N Cane Creek Trestle #10 in Brookwood.
Sokol’s favorite building, which happens to be the first one he made, is one he named the Starry Eye Mattress Company. In addition to the architectural details, there’s a dumpster, trashcans, barrels, bales of cotton and small wooden pallets where workers can be seen stacking mattresses.
The design won two regional awards, including Best in Show, and was displayed one year at the National Model Railroad Association’s convention. “One of the kit manufacturers from Maine found me and said, ‘I want to build a kit out of this model,’” he said.
Sokol gave him permission and the kit maker changed the name of the business to Sokol’s Mattress & Furniture Company as a nod to the creator. The original limited run of 500 kits, priced at $160 a kit, sold out in the first year. Some are currently being re-sold on eBay for more than $200.
While many of the railroad accessories can be purchased, Sokol spends hours creating his own. Model railroad switches, which allow trains to be guided from one track to another, can be purchased for about $30. “I built my own switches for $2 worth of materials,” he said. “I probably saved about $3,000 right there.”
Although saving costs in what can be an expensive hobby is a motivator, part of the fun for Sokol is figuring out how to make his own buildings and structures. The blast furnace on his Sloss Furnaces layout, for example, was made from a wiffle ball bat. “I needed something that was rounded and tapered, so I just cut off each end of the bat,” he said.
He made his lampposts, which are only a few inches tall, out of three different thicknesses of tubing. All of the lighting on the layout, whether on lampposts or in buildings, is fiber optics, he said.
Much of the materials he uses comes from his own backyard. He gets scoops of dirt, bakes it to kill any bugs, sifts it, and attaches it to the ground of the layout with white glue. He makes tree trunks from azalea limbs, drilling holes in the trunks to add smaller branches. Sokol uses hairspray to make clumps of painted ground foam that he uses for the foliage on trees and bushes. “I’ve given workshops on making trees,” he said.
Sights and sound
The electronics that are part of the railroad layout are as impressive as the designs. One of the most popular features is a lightning and rainstorm over one of Sokol’s buildings on his miniature Red Mountain. The soundtrack features thunder and wind, slamming screen doors, barking dogs and other lifelike noises.
The evolution of the technology used to operate the trains makes everything more realistic, Sokol said. “It used to be that every train on the track would go at the same speed and in the same direction,” he said. Now, there’s a computer chip in each locomotive, and model railroad engineers can run trains backward, forward and at different speeds, all on the same track. They can also control sound effects, such as bells, horns and brakes.
Although Sokol completed most of the work on his layout himself, he had several model railroader friends who shared their expertise. Steve Singer helped lay the ties and build the benchwork, which is the foundation for the trains and scenery. Winston Greaves helped with the electronics, and Dave Whikehart helped build the structures. Sokol said he figures everything is about 80 percent complete, but don’t hold him to it.
“A lot of people will ask model railroaders when they are going to be finished, and the answer is they will never be finished,” he said. “There is always more detail to add, and some will build a scene, decide they don’t like it and start over with a new one.”
Although the trains have brought Sokol much joy, they are not his only hobby. He and his wife love to travel – they’ve been to Australia and New Zealand this year and often spend a month or more in a city so they can live like the locals. Although he loves the adventure, he’s always glad to get back to his model railroad.
For the past 15 years or so, he and the other members of the Wrecking Crew club have built locomotive exhibits for the McWane Science Center, which are displayed during the holidays. Aside from the fun of helping to create the layouts, he enjoys watching the children and families enjoy them.
“It’s very rewarding,” he said. “This is a great hobby.”
